


I Saw You in The Window

by Boondogle (Blearybell)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alpha!Sam, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, M/M, Pregnant!Dean, alpha!cas, lawyer!Sam, long lost brother fic, mentions of mpreg, omega!dean, semi-blind!Dean, talk of domestic abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 19:04:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6163453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blearybell/pseuds/Boondogle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean has been lost for over a decade, Sam never thought to look for him. As it turns out he's doing all right, but the roads that led there were hard ones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Saw You in The Window

**Author's Note:**

> I'm here to write for my own pleasure. I ask no sharing of these works and that they stay exactly where they are on this profile.

The current of time is such an unwieldy beast, Dean for so many years had forgotten his life before finding this shady nook in the woods.

Trees were his blanket, the wind became his phone, life half feral was better than life in a lab churning out pups like doll factory. He wasn’t so wild though, he had a home, a mate, and the outward swell of his stomach proved he too was willing to breed, but only under his word and no alpha was going to hover his thumb and force acorns down his throat to build a forest. He and Castiel lived in a quiet town buried up north on the outer edge of Washington State a hat’s throw away from Canada. Castiel during the school year taught Astronomy and Calculus at a local community college while Dean worked in his ceramics studio building kitschy things for the tourist to ogle.

It was honest work, and it brought him something he never had much as a kid, the feeling of fulfilment. Clay focused Dean, it made sense from the way it would fold and collapse if it were too wet, to the way its walls became brittle when too dry. Much like humans baptism by fire was the only way to strengthen weak pieces into stone. Dean never intended to be stone, and there was a time he was so close too. The instincts of his hidden wolf were drawn out strand by strand almost forming a web of madness, he was pulled from the brink of seclusion.

Today though, he was out on a morning walk through the three block sized downtown shopping in the one infant clothing store the next fifty mile radius had to offer. Dean was keen on finding out they were having a girl as much as Cas was. Granted his giant softie for a mate would have wanted anything as long as it was theirs. He scanned the racks finding things he liked, and figured he could let Ms. Mosley, the shop owner, put a few things on layaway till he could load up his truck after he closed his own shop next door. After a half hour Dean figured he could pack in another thirty minutes to his break. It was winter, the slow time of year where only honey mooners and school fieldtrips were the traffic. Deciding on Benny’s Diner for lunch Dean found himself walking down the sidewalk only to be halted, not by the voice but the scent. Alpha, home, family. But not his family not the one he’d built here, the past had come back to haunt him.

****

Sam had taken a well-deserved vacation from the firm, and since Jess had been looped into pulling a double shift in the emergency department giving him the day to himself. Truthfully, he hadn’t pick this town so far north to escape the hodgepodge of Seattle’s never ending traffic. Sam was freshly engaged, and the rumors about the wine up here were near mythic. It wasn’t particularly sunny, yet the soil held a deep secret that made the grapes sweeter and drier. Either way Sam was on a mission to get on the venue waiting list and surprise Jess, when the wind shifted.

Memories of old suddenly slapped him in the face, nights curled under the bed listening to the connection of bone meeting flesh, blood staining the walls, yet there never were screams. Dean never once cried for help, he just laid in his own visage weeping himself to the floor, waiting for the angry fists to lose their gumption. He was beat for being beaten, if John’s knuckles split so did Dean’s temple. His body was a pile of sand that could be wetted and built up again from miniscule grains. Cigarette smoke, beer bottles, whiskey, they all rolled into five men in white suits hauling a thrashing omega into a van that had crashed on its way to Topeka. Not a soul was hurt, but they were missing one teenage boy. Presumed feral or dead.

Sam hadn’t looked for Dean, he didn’t have the hope to dare dream the one shield he had wasn’t withered to dust. Yet here he is whipping his head around chasing a ghost, entering alley ways, searching streets, till (as always) the right answer was the simplest. Running straight down the thoroughfare his well-polished shoes click to a stop on the sopping sidewalk as he is greeted with a storefront. Precarious goods, cups, bowls, entire sculptures masterfully built out of clay stand in the window like gargoyles.

This is a safe place Sam thinks, the lights are off and there’s nothing but a fresh stick of incense burning on the counter. It doesn’t seem like a good sign, if anything he’s confused and hurt. Why wouldn’t Dean want to see him? Or could he be in a dream, longing to lose his grief? There was only one way to find out.

Shockingly the store wasn’t closed. The bell over the door happily announced his arrival.

“Dean?” He dared ask the crowded rows of glazed pots leading up to the front counter.Whoever made these creations knew they would serve as the eyes of Notre Dame, they would watch whatever sin that might take place. Bumping an inch would send them to the floor from their fragile mortality. And despite the shelves being sturdy the cups and bowls rattled away his location.

The store remained silent till the bell above the door foretold the arrival of another. This time though, it wasn’t the sweet scent of guilt cloying him from afar (he was more like drowning in it here, but he digresses.) It was an alpha, sour from concern Sam left the maze of towering shelves to look this man in the eye. His hair was windblown, skewed with moisture he had eyes that struck like lightning under his dark cloud of hair. Which in all was a stark contrast to the rest of his appearance, he was rather polished in a suit and trench coat.

“May I help you?” The man asks in a voice made of jagged cliffs.Sam feeling a little intimidated himself realizes this is also this man’s territory.

“I-uh…I ‘m going to sound like an asshole, but does an omega work here?” Sam also realizes he looks a tad like a shady business man highly decorated in his own suit. He’d worn it more today just to look like he speaks the truth to the event planner that he’s seeking a venue for his own wedding. “He might be tall, sandy brown hair, green eyes.”

The man didn’t waver, he only climbed behind the counter to shrug off his coat down to the cotton white button up and dawn an apron. “And how would this ‘omega’ have any business with you?”

“I’m not here for trouble,” Sam assures. “I lost my brother a long time ago, in an accident.” Partially true. “His name was Dean and I just thought maybe…” His heart died along with the strange alpha’s cautious stare.

“Sammy?” He turned his head and found a man not more than a few inches shorter than him. By all means it looked like nothing had changed about his brother. He still wore his hair short spiked to a tip, a black t-shirt covered in clay smears and a flannel shirt to keep his arms warm. But what really sold Sam that this was really Dean was his right eye, it was still milky, blinded by the dying coals of a cigarette butt.

Sam felt weak, as his heart jumped into his throat. He looked so healthy, and most of all happy. Granted he smelled like mild distress, but the alpha behind the counter seemed to be channeling comfort almost like…

“Is he your mate?” Sam asked directing the question at Dean.

“That’s Cas alright,” Dean said walking over and pulling Sam into a hug, but didn’t connect the right way, something intruded between them.

“Dean you’re…” He said in surprise.

“Yup, soon enough you’ll be an uncle.”

Cas, the alpha behind the counter seemed to let his guard slip just a tad. “Shall we take this in the back?” Cas asked directing them towards the door behind the counter. Cas left them to the small card table while he returned to man the front. They never shared a word but Sam took witness to the silent conversation that danced in their eyes before Casitel sighed and reluctantly shut the door behind him.

“There’s so much I want to know.” Sam said. “Most of all, why this place?”

*****

The coffee bubbled, and he set down a fresh basket of biscuits before making the reluctant sit motion of a pregnant person. Dean set a hand on his stomach, he could feel the pup tap her foot against his palm. One more month is all it will take for this new life to be joined with his. Sam had gotten big, very big, larger than their father even. He’d also taken up wearing longer hair, which he instantly was not a fan of, but this was Sammy he always was going to do things Dean never approved of. He straightened up, letting the cold flashes of the past drown in the dark cold of his mind.

“It hasn’t been easy.” Dean admitted. “But you have to know I’d never let an alpha touch me unless I wanted them to.”

He could tell Sam was shocked. “Never Dean, I know you’re strong, but how did you end up here? And why…” He doesn’t need to finish, he already knows the words before they fall out of his mouth.

“I didn’t know Sam, there was nothing I could do or say to know John wouldn’t come after me. But you have to know it wasn’t you.”

“John’s dead.” Sam said with a little too much satisfaction in his tone. “Wrapped himself around a telephone pole five years ago.”

A smile tugs at his lips. “Then I guess it’s time you know about your brother huh?” Dean said.

He remembers thrashing against the army of hands digging into his body. They were like spears of terror leaving behind angry welts. He was chained, collared for insubordination, and labeled feral all because the man who had been using him as a dangled hog had finally met the blunt end of a baseball bat. Omegas were little more than property, some were lucky to not be owned. Emancipated from the life that so dictates their every move. But not Dean, he was a minor in a red state where most kept their omegas either in a home or were bargaining chips for marriage and property.

Dean still had use, he had regular heats, and according to the grease stain doctor from the institution he was a tree meant to make ripe fruit. They’d never use his eggs though, no he would just be a chamber, the womb, something warm for couples in this dying world to swaddle their own young in and kill off the genetic dysfunction that was him. What a worldly pressure for a fifteen year old boy? He was to have none of it. There was one problem though, he felt the harsh tingle of warmth rapture up his spine. His flesh turned pink, then the sickly sweet sweat started to entice the three alphas and two betas lodged into the cramped vacuum that was the back of a van. The air was so thick with it he made a fog on the windows midsummer. And they could do whatever they wanted with him, they could spread him open and use him to decorate the hood like a slain buck. It would have been within the full rights of the alphas and beta’s in question. After all he is nothing but just a psychotic temptress, you can’t help nature and people for following through with what God intended.

Yet, fate would prove to be on his side. The engine churned to a rather unceremonious stop, popping and crackling as it went, till the hiss explained to the passengers that this was not something that could be remedied fast. While everything on the outside stayed silent, everything on the inside of Dean percolated. He was so desperate for freedom, he begged for something anything from a rather sympathetic looking man who sat closest to Dean. He had sweet blue eyes and a southern accent that maybe at one time he would have fallen for, but for now he was a threat, one knot in a group of five.

“Please.” He whispered out to the man, for he was the only one with humanity in his eyes. “Air, all I ask for is some fresh air.”

The man knitted his brows together, looking awful guilty of himself. “I know you’re hurtin’ cher.” He whispered back.

Dean was on the edge of tears, the rest of the group were surrounding the engine like a jigsaw puzzle they could solve by just staring at it. So Dean did much of the same, he stared at his captor trying to weave together his strands of pity into a sympathetic shroud. He needed to blind this wolf with his own wool.

“Please.” He rasped, “I’m so hot.”

As if he could read Dean’s mind there was a flash of something behind the man’s eyes. “Maybe getting to know each other might keep you focused.” He suggested to Dean. “I got a soft spot on the edge of my jaw, just one tap and I’m a goner, out cold.”

Dean sat for a second. “I’m an omega.”

****

He ran across flat land for what felt like ages, the instinctual urge to run in heat seemed to only help his case instead of hinder it. His young body cried for something beyond what he was getting at the moment, but the lingering thought of John kept his feet crossing through tall crops and over jagged hills till he found an abandoned car to duck into for the night. Little did he know at the time she’s become his best friend for the years to come.

His misery, the scent seemed to seep into the cracked seats. He’d only faced this pain a few times in his life the raw urge surging through his body was still foreign. When he was younger it was almost like getting sick for a few days, there wasn’t and instinct behind any of the moisture, and he most certainly wasn’t flagged from the waist. His body barred relief, even when his own mind whispered at him to follow the instructions the urges were prompting. It took three days of laying quiet with the windows open, and wet rags he ransacked from the abandoned gas station that his presence from the highway. For a place so flaked and warped by time the spigots are still in working order. Water would sizzle off of his skin like bacon in a pan, even if he lay naked bare skin to the wind.

Then suddenly the pain stopped, and his mind lifted. It was a glorious epiphany, along with the fact he was lost out nowhere with nothing but a dirt road to point him in any direction. Dean rebuilt the old beast that harbored him with Frankensteined parts he dug out of the sealed off auto shop. Her seats were nothing but harshly jagged vinyl over time yellowed, crispy, foam. She needed a new coat of paint, but the fact she had all windows and wheels intact were enough to keep him driving. He found money stashed in a cash box under a creaky floor board, it was nothing more than a hundred dollars. But it was more than enough to get him off the ground.

North, and north, he climbed till he hit a mountaintop and made a snow angel in August. This is where he will belong, maybe feral, maybe not, he’ll never have to look at any alpha again if he so pleases. The seasons turned as he learned to hunt for himself. The things that drove his predecessors also seemed to take him far too easily. His mind adapted to the lonesome quiet, fringing off of campsites, he stole clothes, sometimes food.

Tools were his main dragon’s horde, despite only ever using his car to climb down the mountain and find parts. Bobby was the old man who came to know Dean, names were all they shared as far as personal information went. Dean was aware he was a wild eyed, dirt smudged omega. And most gave him a wide berth because he had the scent, harsh yet earthy it was the smell of primordial instinct that no longer fit with the world. And the old man seemed to admire that.

He grew and matured amongst the trees, Bobby seemed to grasp Dean was trying to escape and that there was to be no shame in it. When winter would bite him down the mountain, covered in layers so thick Dean could barely walk. Once, he had come back from the scrap yard, only with a hand full of used but still good spark plugs and a lug nut to find Bobby piled his back seat with half a logging truck’s worth of goods.

“It don’t take a damn genius to figure out you’re no doubt freezing your nads off in that poor old clunker.” Bobby said taking a pull from the bottle swaddled in a brown bag. “Hell I’d help you build the sonovabitch if I knew where you were ducking out kid.”

Dean was happy with the offer, but like most of their conversations it went very one sided. He nodded his head. His small shed was nothing more than a nest of sleeping bags but it kept the cold out much better than the metal walls of what he now dubbed as his ‘Baby’. His world was great, grand even, he had all he could ever want, he had a home, steady food, and warmth. The rest of his life was going to be served at the base of a cave hidden away from the world where no one can catch his omega stink and imprison him.

Paradise, is still only an illusion.

He was found, well not exactly him. Who he was and where he lived were invaded by unknown passersby. It was one particularly hard winter, his home, once sealed tight has been burst open from the outside. His clothes, gone, his nest torn to shreds, and there was the lingering scent of alpha. Whether it had been a hiker or a park ranger giving him a clear message to leave, Dean would never know. Because fate was an awful teacher.

That very day his breath quickened, his skin turned pink, and the visceral urge to mate pulsed through every vein. But he could not stay home, not any more there was a rabid alpha out ruining homes. The first glimmering thought in his mind is to find a cave, a hole where he can ride out this cursed storm. Even in his experience of spending near a decade amongst the pines Dean gets lost, fumbling through the night a heavy snow shifts diagonally like invisible hands pushing him. The temperatures had dropped enough to turn him blue despite the fact his body was letting the world know he was warm and ready for a brood. He wandered, hazed in the trees trying to find a way back to his car when tires screeched, rubber slipping through ice forced his him to stare into the glowing eyes of someone’s beast.

At first the world was one continuous rhythmic beep. His mind first caught the scent of alpha, but what was so strange, yet comforting was the fact the scent was scared.

Distress blanketed the room. It helped him sleep. Not because someone was struck so harshly with fear, but the underlying notes that sweetly asked him if he was okay. Genuine concern wasn’t something he was by far used to, it was a foreign concept that most people could experience. But nobody would be concerned for Dean, it just wasn’t in the world’s nature to care about omegas. They were worthless toys, things on strings to be played with and discarded. Yet the scent never went away, and when his eyes hit first light Dean got a glimpse at the man who would pull his lonely bones in from the cold.

“Hello Dean.” Were the first words out of his mouth, the alpha, Castiel as he soon came to know looked like a tattered cloth in the wind. His eyes were swollen, and there was a thick three day scruff sewn around his chin.

“How do you know my name?” His voice was hoarse, cracked and dry from years of disuse.

“It was sewn into your jacket…I’m so sorry this happened, I-I was on my way home and you just appeared.”

Dean stared at him for a long moment, drawing in the coffee stain on his shirt to the acrid smell of a restless alpha. He was actually distraught, over Dean! Of all people to ever actually be concerned over… this man was wasting his time.

Despite the fact under all of the hurt, and fear Castiel smelled good. Too good for Dean to really piece together whether or not it’s okay to for him to really indulge in the hearty fresh scent. That is what he was to Dean, a breath of fresh air, nonjudgmental, Castiel never once looked to Dean with an air of pity, just remorse that he’d hurt another living being. It seemed too good to be true, and his distrust outweighed instinct to lean in on _his_ alpha and be comforted.

Whenever he was near Castiel dangerous thoughts like that rang through his mind. No one belonged to Dean, and Dean sure as hell was going to belong to nobody. He was unwanted the moment he was born. His mother fell into a deep dark abyss the moment his lungs caught air. It was his fault Sam grew up without a mother, it was his fault John only knew how to speak to him with fists. There was just something so intrinsic about Dean that made the people around him sink farther away from humanity.

It all started with a cup of coffee that Castiel had brought him from the crappy vending machine down the hall. The smile that spread across his face when Dean took a drink and sighed in relief soon snowballed into him knowing just about everything that is Castiel. He’s an astronomist, and most of his love lies with the stars. Which is why he lives so far from the city, so he can gaze upon the universe’s work on a nightly basis. His favorite star, which is rather cliché, is Polaris, the northstar. Castiel is just so interesting, he seems to have answers for everything.

While Dean, he’s just some feral bred who figured out his place in the world too early. A man with such high potential shouldn’t be making sure that Dean is getting proper physical therapy, or eating right, by all means Cas should be gone. Off cracking conversations with people who can hold their water in academia. Yet he stays, bringing him juice, sneaking in cheeseburgers when the hospital food looks like it is better suited for making plastic rather than actually sustaining human life. And he always asks about Dean, to which he doesn’t have much to offer…he’s just well Dean. He knows how to gut and bleed a deer in under twenty minutes, and knows the proper way to smoke a fish over a fire. He’s primitive in comparison to the entire library that lives inside Castiel.

The weeks turned and Dean was finally allowed to leave the hospital. Castiel insisted, (well more demanded) that he take Dean home. Under the guise it was the least he could do, Dean secretly held a pouch of delusional hope he could just find his car and follow Castiel home. He directed Cas to the base of the mountain, he lives half way up (the farthest his car can go) plus a few miles around the side to flat land. It’ll be a bitch on crutches and a half mended wrist but that’s what painkillers are for right? Pulling up to a small out cropping of trees Castiel looked a little confused to find an abandoned access road and a trail sign warning the public about wolves.

“Dean what is this?”

“The farthest you’re going.” He says prying the passenger door open.

“I don’t agree with this.” He protests, grabbing Dean by the wrist. His grasp is gentle but unobtrusive, yet desperation lives in those lake-like eyes Dean has regretfully become fond of.

“Welcome to feral life.” Dean says sarcastically.

 Castiel pinches his face, he’s displeased so what? Good smelling alpha or not he’ll never be owned and used, let alone fall back into a real life. “Dean, I have not known you long but you are far from feral.”

“You sayin’ I can’t handle my own?” Dean growls.

“Not at all. You… do you have somewhere to sleep? Is it warm?” He says with genuine concern, his eyes are shiny as if he’s on the verge of something.

“I have enough Cas.”

And with that Dean got out of the car and started the twelve mile hike in the mud on crutches. Castiel followed him the whole way, not for a moment saying a word but keeping a safe distance back. Dean could hear him squelch through the mud, sigh over boulders, crunch through the snow, and Dean let him out of pure exhaustion. He didn’t want Cas to witness the hovel he’s carved out for himself. Which is so odd for a man who has lived with so little embarrassment, now of all times Dean knows his face is blotched red as they crest the last hill before he finds his car right where he left her.

“What is this?” (Again with that question) Castiel asks as Dean pops open the back door and sits. The ache in his bones is astronomical, his broken hip screams to be elevated, and he wants nothing more than a nice hot pad for his wrist that has been taking the brunt of this journey.

“Check point, well more like half way.” Dean admits, which was frighteningly easy considering the fact he wants Cas to just go away and let him live out this travesty in peace.

“Half way to what?” Castiel presses on.

“The valley, my house sorta isn’t on what you’d call legal land.”

They don’t say much after that, Dean looks towards the sun seeing that this time a year it should be about noon. So he pushes through the agony, and sweats his way through the back woods with Castiel still on his tail. The shed looks a little worse for wear, and despite being intruded on before he can see no signs that anyone has been back since then. Above, the sky was bruising into night, Cas wasn’t going to make it back to his car in time to not be a dead body by morning.

“It’s beautiful Dean.” Were the first words out of Castiel’s mouth as he glanced up to the heavens.

“For once it doesn’t look like it’s going to rain.” He said maneuvering himself on the big log he usually uses as a bench. Even injured Dean is able to start a fire, his rations have gone rotten so he supposes going hungry for a few days won’t hurt. “It’d be best you left at dawn.” Dean said bluntly. “Going down’s easier than up.”

“With all due respect Dean, I’m not leaving you out here. I’m uneasy about you being left to your own devices being as injured as you are.”

“I made it out here didn’t I? And where were you with the speeches about safety when I was hobbling up this mother fucker earlier today?” Dean protested.

“We may not have known each other long, but I had more than an instinct to know I could not tell you no. Not today, but tomorrow is a new day, and I will see to it you sleep in a real bed by sunset or so help me.”

****

“Then the rest was history.” Dean said matter-a-factly. “I moved in, we fought like mongooses and snakes till I pulled my head out of my ass and realized… Cas loves me.” Dean ran his knuckles over his stomach, a strange habit that formed when he started showing. “Then I got a job with the old coot who used to run this place and when he kicked it my name was the only one on the will.”

The first months were so rocky Dean was unsure how Cas kept him around, the breaking point seemed so close till one day he felt better. Little by little he melted his heart, stopped trying to find every drop of alcohol his lips could touch, and began to see little flashes of what Cas was talking about. And boy, did it hurt to see himself reflected in a mirror that wasn’t broken.

The days turned into weeks, the weeks to months, months to years, till one day Castiel came home to Dean in heat and not wanting to lock himself in the basement for five days. Instead of coming in to the wafty smell of whatever recipe Dean had been experimenting with that night, Castiel set down his brief case upon closing the front door behind him only to find Dean splayed out on the couch quivering and desperate.

Sam of course doesn’t need to know this, but he can’t help but remember fondly the first time he felt what it was like to make love. It wasn’t like the rough nights with strangers he’d found at the bar the few times he stayed in town to blow off a little steam. Castiel rolled into him with reverence, like the years had been too long for him to have been allowed to touch Dean. He was lotion to parched skin, the relief in the air was palpable enough to feel as the boulders of doubt suddenly fell off of his back. It was like swimming, rhythmic, hard, and when they both felt like they couldn’t breathe anymore they crashed into the air falling into each other like puzzle pieces slotting perfectly together. It was that moment Dean knew, and asked that things be final. No more searching himself, for things that aren’t there, he has demons but so does the rest of the world. And despite seeing their ugly twisted faces almost on a daily basis Castiel still saw past them and reached for Dean’s gleaming core.

“I have someone too.” Sam admitted. “We’re sort of waiting for the whole mating bite thing…Any way the wedding is in July, and I was wondering…”

“I’d love to Sammy.” He smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are never going to be enabled on any of my works, they will be moderated but never approved despite positive or negative feedback.
> 
> As a side note, none of these works will be intended for future editing beyond a few spacing errors, and maybe to add or delete some author's notes. So I ask, please refrain from sending me grammatical corrections or anything of the sort. I'm just a busy science student who does this for some good ol' fashioned stress relief.


End file.
